We are controlled in time by patterns . any good prison can illustrate this, and any good assassin or police man knows that to make a successful hit, he must first study his victim's patterns. Those who move in patteerns can be controlled...or terminated

Music has become a control process. it can function to make boring routine work bearable (muzak) to market products (things or people), as a status ritual (opera) or as a safty valve for the known percentage of rebels in a given society (punk rock, hip hop). To function, this music depends upon predictable patterns... which reinforce the control process...

It is necessary to escape any and all patterns. The way out, is through the imagination and dreams - to pay attention to them, to translate them into actions and as time rusns out we want more out of time. We crave experience that is genuine. We want tot feel a pounding of blood a push of adrenalin through our viens that corresponds to our imaginatve visions of a real adventure and somewhere along the way we lost the right to a trance state without censorship. among allies - that trance state which served to disrupt and break up rigid patterns of body and mind

in a society without meaningful symbols, goals or adventure it is necesary to elude any and all patterns. WHAT WAS FREEDOM YESTERDAY IS CONTROL TODAY. Subcultures, such as this one, must evolve to counter-culture. They must be escape routes, part of the continuing battle for psychic freedom in a world without dreams... a world whose territory and time is being used up fast. It's time to go and stay out of control...

Wed Aug 21, 2002 2:10 am

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

yes or no?

Wed Aug 21, 2002 2:12 am

Petrouchka Rasputin

Joined: 30 Jun 2002
Posts: 852

haha

If you abandon patterns completely, you end up with crap like Arnold Schoenberg. Think of the non-musical equivalents of the 12-tone method, and you'll wish you'd never had that idea.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 10:20 am

kilgore trout

Joined: 15 Aug 2002
Posts: 117
Location: charlottesville VA

if you give up music because it controls you, you might as well give up food, etc. because it controls us.

at what cost freedom?

is it worth it?

i personally allow myself to be partially coontrolled by my emotions [i.e. , if i see my girlfriend, i smile, [thus controlling ymself] and if she doesn't smile back, i let her control me into worry. bad grammar, i dunno. but still..

absolute freedom is death.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 10:29 am

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

No the point is not to "give up on music" but to recognize that new tactics must be employed, or in the case of music sounds must evolve.

if we stick to old patterns they win (look at how gansta rap has been taken over by the mainstream for an example)

Wed Aug 21, 2002 2:36 pm

Jesse

Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 6165
Location: privileged homeless

You've failed to instill within me any urgent notion that patterns must be overcome, or even give me a sense of why one would feel that way.

Musically, I'm generally more pleased with tradition than the bulk of what can truly be considered innovative. I mean heck sure, innovation is inevitable, it leads to many great things and can be beautiful... but the similarities to masturbation don't end there.

Why must we break the patterns?

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:10 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

hmm well the above was not written by me, though I agree with it. Why must we avoid patterns? Cause like the above said, yesterday's freedom is todays control".

Let us take youth culture. Youth culture offers us freedom, yet the corporate music world is constantly looking for new forms of music to exploit. Why? because it can produce little itself, and people recognize it which is why kids leave fads as quick as they join them. The problem with patterns as it pertains to youth culture is that once a pattern is there "the mainstream" will take it, water it down and exploit it. That in itself is not terrible, but what happens is that culture dies and the kids move on. (pick any example, 77 punk, grunge, gangsta rap etc...)

really it is inevitable. If you stick with the pattern, people will move on anyway...

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:27 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

stale culture is dead culture.

(none of this is to say that old patterns are worthless, that you can't enjoy a beatles record or a public enemy record. But to have a culture of redudancy is bad for everyone)

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:29 pm

Jesse

Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 6165
Location: privileged homeless

Culture just IS though. A self-conscious approach to cultural matters is doomed... it's like trying to reprogram your own psyche. You can have an effect, but you can't achieve a goal.

I guess you're on a modernist trip and I'm more on that ol' post-modernist jammy. Different priorities, maybe.

A culture that becomes stale dies... and deserves death. It is right for such things to pass, because that is their nature. New things will take their place in time... either innocently or, in the less attractive case, by determination. The latter tends to involve things like Preservation... cultural mummification... which uh has nothing to do with anything you've said so I'll snuff out that tangent just for the moment. ^_^

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:46 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

Old post modernist?

I disagree about subcultures just being. Any subculture ive been a part of was shaped by the consious efforts of those involved.

Hip hop or punk or goth didn't appear out of thin air, they were made.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:50 pm

Jesse

Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 6165
Location: privileged homeless

Hip hop
Punk
Goth

not cultures, none of 'em. "subculture" is a code word for "identifiable market niche".

All of them are umbrella terms referring to myriad and disconnected youth movements. All of them secretly boil down to what are we doing on Friday night. None of them have any inherent or universally acknowledged qualities.

Who Built Hip Hop?
Who Built Punk?
Who Built Goth?

The answer to all three may as well be Nike.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:59 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

you have obviously never been a part of the punk scene if you think it isn't a subculture and clearly have not even a basic knowledge of its history if you think it was built by Nike (same goes for hip hop)

Punk, and hip hop, are terms with multiple definitions. You could say Sum 41 and kids that listen to that are punk maybe. But that doesnt' refute the fact that punk and hip hop operate as real subculture communities.

Dictionary: cul·ture
1. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population
2. Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.

Hip hop and Punk rock fit both of those definitions perfectly. To pretend that hip hop/punk aren't cultures because not everyone has identical beliefs or behaviors is to effectivly say CULTURE DOESN"T EXIST.

and then we are back to semantics games.

"None of them have any inherent or universally acknowledged qualities. "

um they have as much ankoledged qualities as "black culture" or "mideval culture" do. But of course NONE of those things has universally acknowledged qualities, nor should they. Things aren't that black and white.

Last edited by August Spies on Wed Aug 21, 2002 6:35 pm; edited 1 time in total

Wed Aug 21, 2002 6:30 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

two other definitions, which those subcultures also fit:

"These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression"

"The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization. "

Wed Aug 21, 2002 6:32 pm

Jesse

Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 6165
Location: privileged homeless

Guilty - never been a part of any punk scene. I said "Nike" just for the cynical sheesh value, it wasn't meant to actually answer the question - let alone supercede them. Ignore the tongue-in-cheek Nike and get back to the questions, if you please.

I disagree about how those definitions can be applied to hip hop or punk - maybe a sort of perverse conglomerate of the two definitions, but can you identify the period/class/community that expresses itself via either? The second definition is not pertinent to what is "A" culture, only what is colloquially called culture as an entity within heh heh western culture.

Incidentally, you will not hear me defending the validity of such terms as "black culture" or "medieval culture". How could such enormous concepts as dark-skinned people in general or a period spanning hundreds of different years in MANY civilizations ever be considered to encompass a particular experience or community? Those are not cultures.

There's a narrow way of looking at culture, there's a broad way of looking at culture, and then there's an inaccurate way.

Unfortunately, Muchmusic just played the video for Danger by Blahzay Blahzay and I can't concentrate anymore. It's been years since I've seen that jammy and I forgot about all the guest appearances... I need a cold shower or something. Sorry.

Hey I hope I'm not coming off too adversarial here this evening... I'm just contrary, you know? It is all pretty semantic, ultimately.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 7:34 pm

August Spies

Joined: 09 Aug 2002
Posts: 1979
Location: D.C.

well black culture was just a reference to something other people were debating, but lets not be silly clearly I/they were referring to blacks in america. And one can assume in a current context.

Talking about many civilizations.... I think you are clearly just trying to misread my post, or being overly semantical.

Your asking me what period or class or community the punk scene deals with? well... uh the punk community.

Wed Aug 21, 2002 9:34 pm

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